The Scriptures for the iPhone and iPod Touch version 1.0.1 is now in review status at the App Store. You can read about the changes here.

On App Store Reviews

One thing I’ve noticed about the reviews that the application has received is that they are all pretty favorable, which I’m grateful for. The ones that aren’t favorable (which are all one star reviews), all have a common theme. Not one of them is a review of the application itself, but of the religion that the application is designed for.

I should be used to people criticizing and mocking my religion, but what always amazes me is how members of other Christian churches feel it is their duty to expose us as some radical group of wacko impostor Christians simply because our beliefs regarding the Savior are different than their own.

This isn’t a new practice among Christians, but as illustrated in Luke chapter 9 it is one that we should all know better than to follow:

49 And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.

50 And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.

Apple handles these types of reviews in the App Store by providing a “Was this review helpful” feature, which other people can answer yes or no. Since by default the reviews are sorted by most helpful, these types of irrelevant reviews tend to get pushed towards the bottom.

On “Competition”

Something else I’ve noticed in the App Store reviews is a tendency for people to compare The Scriptures application which I developed to the one developed by Michael Jensen. Such comparisons between similar applications are natural, however there a few things regarding these comparisons that I feel a need to comment on.

First of all my application is not in competition with Michael’s. Compete is defined as:

verb: strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same

I am not striving to gain or win something, nor am I trying to defeat or establish superiority over Michael’s app. When I started writing The Scriptures, there was no LDS Scripture reader for the iPhone yet available. I wanted one, so I decided to write one. While I was writing one, Michael’s was released. It takes a bit of time to design and develop an application. (Not to mention how long it takes to get one through the App Store review process), so don’t think that I saw Michael’s app and said to myself, “Hmmm, I think I’ll write a free version to compete with this.”.

This brings me to my next point, some reviews that I have seen on both my (and recently Michael’s) app, have criticized Michael for charging money for something that many people believe should be given away for free. While I don’t charge for my application, having run a software business for some time, I can’t begrudge someone for wanting to charge money for their work. Michael has stated that he contracted with a developer to write the application. This of course costs money. We don’t know if it was an hourly rate, a one time contract, if there was a retainer fee for updates, if royalties are involved, etc.. On top of that, there is a cost involved to just getting an application in the App Store once it is written.

It isn’t fair to Michael to pass judgement on him when we don’t know the particulars of the financial details involved in his situation. We shouldn’t forget the work he did to make ReadScriptures.com available for free (which must be costing Michael some of his personal money every month just in hosting fees). Above all we should remember that Michael is a son of God with a wife and children that love him. That alone should command our respect.

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It has given my great joy to write this application and see people receive it favorably. In the latest release, I tried to incorporate as many suggestions from users as I could given my time constraints. I hope to add even more great features in the future, so please keep your emails coming. It’s nice to hear from users that are enjoying some feature that I worked hard to design and implement. Just to give you an idea of things to come, the next point release should include:

• Scripture marking support.
• Annotations (note taking).
• Inter-chapter navigation.
• The ability to change to a sans-serif type font
• (Hopefully) footnotes

If I am able to include more content, I will. As I have already told many of you regarding this, some of those items that I want to include are under copyright from the church and I can’t legally put them into an application for distribution without their permission, hopefully however, that will be resolved soon.

Finally some people have asked if they could donate to support this effort. The answer is thanks, but no. The Scriptures are and will remain free. As I mentioned on the project page, if you like the application so much that you want to donate something, instead of sending me money, make a donation to the Church’s Perpetual Education Fund to help the next generation of application developers (among other careers).

Thanks again for everyone’s support, as always Please send all bug reports / feature requests to me via email:

lee <dot> falin <at>gmail <dot> com